Matthew Gill

Business and Management, Corporate Governance and Accountability, Finance, Accounting, and Banking

Accounting is the language of business, increasingly standardized across the world through global banks and corporations: a technical tool used to reach the correct, unquestionable answer. ...
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Accounting is the language of business, increasingly standardized across the world through global banks and corporations: a technical tool used to reach the correct, unquestionable answer. Nonetheless, as recent corporate scandals have shown, a whole range of financial professionals (accountants, auditors, bankers, finance directors) can collectively fail to question dubious actions. How is this possible? To understand such failures, this book explores how accountants construct the technical knowledge they deem relevant to decision-making. In doing so, it not only offers a new way to understand deviance and scandals, but also suggests a reappraisal of accounting knowledge which has important implications for everyday commercial life. The book's findings are based on interviews with chartered accountants working in the largest accountancy practices in London. The interviews reveal that although accounting decisions seem clear after they have been made, the process of making them is contested and opaque. Yet accountants nonetheless tend to describe their work as if it were straightforward and technical. This book delves beneath the surface to explore how accountants actually construct knowledge, and draws out the implications of that process with respect to issues such as professionalism, performance, transparency, and ethics. This thought-provoking book concludes that accountants' technical discourse undermines their ethical reasoning by obscuring the ways in which accounting decisions must be thought through in practice. Accountants with particular ethical perspectives more readily understand and construct particular types of knowledge, so the two issues of knowledge and of ethics are inseparable. Increasingly technical accounting rules can therefore be counterproductive. Instead, this book shows how reinvigorating the ethical discourse within the financial world could be a more effective means of averting future scandals.Less

Accountants' Truth : Knowledge and Ethics in the Financial World

Matthew Gill

Published in print: 2009-06-25

Accounting is the language of business, increasingly standardized across the world through global banks and corporations: a technical tool used to reach the correct, unquestionable answer. Nonetheless, as recent corporate scandals have shown, a whole range of financial professionals (accountants, auditors, bankers, finance directors) can collectively fail to question dubious actions. How is this possible? To understand such failures, this book explores how accountants construct the technical knowledge they deem relevant to decision-making. In doing so, it not only offers a new way to understand deviance and scandals, but also suggests a reappraisal of accounting knowledge which has important implications for everyday commercial life. The book's findings are based on interviews with chartered accountants working in the largest accountancy practices in London. The interviews reveal that although accounting decisions seem clear after they have been made, the process of making them is contested and opaque. Yet accountants nonetheless tend to describe their work as if it were straightforward and technical. This book delves beneath the surface to explore how accountants actually construct knowledge, and draws out the implications of that process with respect to issues such as professionalism, performance, transparency, and ethics. This thought-provoking book concludes that accountants' technical discourse undermines their ethical reasoning by obscuring the ways in which accounting decisions must be thought through in practice. Accountants with particular ethical perspectives more readily understand and construct particular types of knowledge, so the two issues of knowledge and of ethics are inseparable. Increasingly technical accounting rules can therefore be counterproductive. Instead, this book shows how reinvigorating the ethical discourse within the financial world could be a more effective means of averting future scandals.

Christopher S. Chapman, David J. Cooper, and Peter Miller (eds)

Business and Management, Organization Studies, Finance, Accounting, and Banking

Accounting has an ever-increasing significance in contemporary society. Indeed, some argue that its practices are fundamental to the development and functioning of modern capitalist societies. We can ...
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Accounting has an ever-increasing significance in contemporary society. Indeed, some argue that its practices are fundamental to the development and functioning of modern capitalist societies. We can see accounting everywhere: in organizations where budgeting, investing, costing, and performance appraisal rely on accounting practices; in financial and other audits; in corporate scandals and financial reporting and regulation; in corporate governance, risk management, and accountability, and in the corresponding growth and influence of the accounting profession. Accounting, too, is an important part of the curriculum and research of business and management schools, the fastest growing sector in higher education. This growth is largely a phenomenon of the last fifty years or so. Prior to that, accounting was seen mainly as a mundane, technical, bookkeeping exercise (and some still share that naive view). The growth in accounting has demanded a corresponding engagement by scholars to examine and highlight the important behavioural, organizational, institutional, and social dimensions of accounting. Pioneering work by accounting researchers and social scientists more generally has persuasively demonstrated to a wider social science, professional, management, and policy audience how many aspects of life are indeed constituted, to an important extent, through the calculative practices of accounting. Anthony Hopwood, to whom this books is dedicated, has been a leading figure in this endeavour, which has effectively defined accounting as a distinctive field of research in the social sciences. The book brings together the work of leading international accounting academics and social scientists, and demonstrates the scope, vitality, and insights of contemporary scholarship in and on accounting and auditing.Less

Published in print: 2009-08-13

Accounting has an ever-increasing significance in contemporary society. Indeed, some argue that its practices are fundamental to the development and functioning of modern capitalist societies. We can see accounting everywhere: in organizations where budgeting, investing, costing, and performance appraisal rely on accounting practices; in financial and other audits; in corporate scandals and financial reporting and regulation; in corporate governance, risk management, and accountability, and in the corresponding growth and influence of the accounting profession. Accounting, too, is an important part of the curriculum and research of business and management schools, the fastest growing sector in higher education. This growth is largely a phenomenon of the last fifty years or so. Prior to that, accounting was seen mainly as a mundane, technical, bookkeeping exercise (and some still share that naive view). The growth in accounting has demanded a corresponding engagement by scholars to examine and highlight the important behavioural, organizational, institutional, and social dimensions of accounting. Pioneering work by accounting researchers and social scientists more generally has persuasively demonstrated to a wider social science, professional, management, and policy audience how many aspects of life are indeed constituted, to an important extent, through the calculative practices of accounting. Anthony Hopwood, to whom this books is dedicated, has been a leading figure in this endeavour, which has effectively defined accounting as a distinctive field of research in the social sciences. The book brings together the work of leading international accounting academics and social scientists, and demonstrates the scope, vitality, and insights of contemporary scholarship in and on accounting and auditing.

Business and Management, Finance, Accounting, and Banking, Political Economy

This book addresses two important questions: first, why did financial innovation lead to the crisis in the banking sector that developed in 2007–8; and, second, why the political reform of finance ...
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This book addresses two important questions: first, why did financial innovation lead to the crisis in the banking sector that developed in 2007–8; and, second, why the political reform of finance has apparently proved so difficult across a variety of political jurisdictions? This ambitious book draws on a team of researchers from different disciplines to develop an innovation and distinctive argument in response to these two critical issues. In the first half of this book our question is about how crisis was generated. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 develop our answer, which is that innovation in and around the financial markets took the form of bricolage which did not consider the risks, uncertainty, and unintended consequences of volume-based business models and complex circuits. The direct implication is that finance needs to be simplified, rather than regulation made more sophisticated. In the second half of the book, our question is about why democratic political control both before and after the crisis has proved so difficult? Chapters 5, 6, and 7 develop our answer, which is that self-serving financial elites are not easily controlled by technocratic elites who are themselves recovering from knowledge failure, or by the rest of the governing classes concerned with political positioning for electoral advantage on issues which are technical, opaque, and illegible to the electorate at large. In Chapter 8, we discuss some of the implications of this analysis for how reform of both banking regulation and democracy is required.Less

After the Great Complacence : Financial Crisis and the Politics of Reform

Published in print: 2011-09-01

This book addresses two important questions: first, why did financial innovation lead to the crisis in the banking sector that developed in 2007–8; and, second, why the political reform of finance has apparently proved so difficult across a variety of political jurisdictions? This ambitious book draws on a team of researchers from different disciplines to develop an innovation and distinctive argument in response to these two critical issues. In the first half of this book our question is about how crisis was generated. Chapters 2, 3, and 4 develop our answer, which is that innovation in and around the financial markets took the form of bricolage which did not consider the risks, uncertainty, and unintended consequences of volume-based business models and complex circuits. The direct implication is that finance needs to be simplified, rather than regulation made more sophisticated. In the second half of the book, our question is about why democratic political control both before and after the crisis has proved so difficult? Chapters 5, 6, and 7 develop our answer, which is that self-serving financial elites are not easily controlled by technocratic elites who are themselves recovering from knowledge failure, or by the rest of the governing classes concerned with political positioning for electoral advantage on issues which are technical, opaque, and illegible to the electorate at large. In Chapter 8, we discuss some of the implications of this analysis for how reform of both banking regulation and democracy is required.

Kees Camfferman and Stephen A. Zeff

Business and Management, Finance, Accounting, and Banking, International Business

This book provides a historical study of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) from 2001 to 2011. During this period, the IASB and its International Financial Reporting Standards ...
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This book provides a historical study of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) from 2001 to 2011. During this period, the IASB and its International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) acquired a central position in the practice and regulation of financial reporting around the world. As a unique instance of a private-sector body setting standards with legal force in many jurisdictions, the IASB’s rise to prominence has been accompanied by vivid political debates about its governance and accountability. Similarly, the IASB’s often innovative attempts to change the face of financial reporting have made it the centre of numerous controversies. The book traces the history of the IASB from its foundation as successor to the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC), and discusses its operation, changing membership and leadership, the development of its standards, and their reception in jurisdictions around the world. The book gives particular attention to the IASB’s relationships with the European Union, the United States, and Japan, as well as to the impact of the financial crisis on the IASB’s work.Less

Kees CamffermanStephen A. Zeff

Published in print: 2015-03-01

This book provides a historical study of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) from 2001 to 2011. During this period, the IASB and its International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs) acquired a central position in the practice and regulation of financial reporting around the world. As a unique instance of a private-sector body setting standards with legal force in many jurisdictions, the IASB’s rise to prominence has been accompanied by vivid political debates about its governance and accountability. Similarly, the IASB’s often innovative attempts to change the face of financial reporting have made it the centre of numerous controversies. The book traces the history of the IASB from its foundation as successor to the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC), and discusses its operation, changing membership and leadership, the development of its standards, and their reception in jurisdictions around the world. The book gives particular attention to the IASB’s relationships with the European Union, the United States, and Japan, as well as to the impact of the financial crisis on the IASB’s work.

Mauro F. Guillén

Business and Management, Finance, Accounting, and Banking, Organization Studies

Why are there so many crises in the world? Is it true that the global system is today riskier and more dangerous than in past decades? Do we have any tools at our disposal to bring these problems ...
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Why are there so many crises in the world? Is it true that the global system is today riskier and more dangerous than in past decades? Do we have any tools at our disposal to bring these problems under control, to reduce the global system’s proneness to instability? These are the tantalizing questions addressed in this book. Using a variety of demographic, economic, financial, social, and political indicators, the book demonstrates that the global system has indeed become an “architecture of collapse” subject to a variety of shocks. An analysis of the global financial crisis of 2008, the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and China, and the European sovereign debt crisis illustrates how the complexity and tight coupling of system components creates a situation of precarious stability and periodic disruption. This state of affairs can only be improved by enhancing the shock-absorbing components of the system, especially the capacity of states and governments to act, and by containing the shock-diffusing mechanisms, especially those related to phenomena such as trade imbalances, portfolio investment, cross-border banking, population ageing, and income and wealth inequality.Less

The Architecture of Collapse : The Global System in the 21st Century

Mauro F. Guillén

Published in print: 2015-11-01

Why are there so many crises in the world? Is it true that the global system is today riskier and more dangerous than in past decades? Do we have any tools at our disposal to bring these problems under control, to reduce the global system’s proneness to instability? These are the tantalizing questions addressed in this book. Using a variety of demographic, economic, financial, social, and political indicators, the book demonstrates that the global system has indeed become an “architecture of collapse” subject to a variety of shocks. An analysis of the global financial crisis of 2008, the bilateral relationship between the U.S. and China, and the European sovereign debt crisis illustrates how the complexity and tight coupling of system components creates a situation of precarious stability and periodic disruption. This state of affairs can only be improved by enhancing the shock-absorbing components of the system, especially the capacity of states and governments to act, and by containing the shock-diffusing mechanisms, especially those related to phenomena such as trade imbalances, portfolio investment, cross-border banking, population ageing, and income and wealth inequality.

Jens Beckert and Matías Dewey (eds)

Business and Management, Finance, Accounting, and Banking, International Business

From illegal drugs, stolen artwork, and forged trademarks, to fraud on financial markets—the phenomenon of illegality in market exchanges is pervasive. Illegal markets have great economic ...
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From illegal drugs, stolen artwork, and forged trademarks, to fraud on financial markets—the phenomenon of illegality in market exchanges is pervasive. Illegal markets have great economic significance, have relevant social and political consequences, and shape economic and political structures. Despite the importance of illegality in the economy, the field of economic sociology unquestioningly accepts the premise that the institutional structures and exchanges taking place in markets are law-abiding in nature. This volume seeks to challenge this. Questions that stand at the center of the chapters are: What are the interfaces between legal and illegal markets? How do demand and supply in illegal markets interact? What role do criminal organizations play in illegal markets? What is the relationship between illegality and governments? Is illegality a phenomenon central to capitalism? Anchored in economic sociology, this book contributes to the analysis and understanding of market exchanges in conditions of illegality from a perspective that focuses on the social organization of markets. Offering both theoretical reflections and case studies, the chapters assembled in the volume address the consequences of the illegal production, distribution, and consumption of products for the architecture of markets. It also focuses on the underlying causes and the political and social concerns stemming from the infringement of the law. This book provides insights into the trades in diamonds and counterfeit clothing, rhino horn and human organs, alcohol and doping products, marihuana and smuggled goods, stolen antiquities and personal information, and illegal practices in finance and price setting.Less

The Architecture of Illegal Markets : Towards an Economic Sociology of Illegality in the Economy

Published in print: 2017-08-03

From illegal drugs, stolen artwork, and forged trademarks, to fraud on financial markets—the phenomenon of illegality in market exchanges is pervasive. Illegal markets have great economic significance, have relevant social and political consequences, and shape economic and political structures. Despite the importance of illegality in the economy, the field of economic sociology unquestioningly accepts the premise that the institutional structures and exchanges taking place in markets are law-abiding in nature. This volume seeks to challenge this. Questions that stand at the center of the chapters are: What are the interfaces between legal and illegal markets? How do demand and supply in illegal markets interact? What role do criminal organizations play in illegal markets? What is the relationship between illegality and governments? Is illegality a phenomenon central to capitalism? Anchored in economic sociology, this book contributes to the analysis and understanding of market exchanges in conditions of illegality from a perspective that focuses on the social organization of markets. Offering both theoretical reflections and case studies, the chapters assembled in the volume address the consequences of the illegal production, distribution, and consumption of products for the architecture of markets. It also focuses on the underlying causes and the political and social concerns stemming from the infringement of the law. This book provides insights into the trades in diamonds and counterfeit clothing, rhino horn and human organs, alcohol and doping products, marihuana and smuggled goods, stolen antiquities and personal information, and illegal practices in finance and price setting.

Michael Power

Business and Management, Finance, Accounting, and Banking, Organization Studies

Since the early 1980s there has been an explosion of auditing activity in the United Kingdom and North America. In addition to financial audits there are now medical audits, technology audits, value ...
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Since the early 1980s there has been an explosion of auditing activity in the United Kingdom and North America. In addition to financial audits there are now medical audits, technology audits, value for money audits, environmental audits, quality audits, teaching audits, and many others. Why has this happened? What does it mean when a society invests so heavily in an industry of checking and when more and more individuals find themselves subject to formal scrutiny? This book argues that the rise of auditing has its roots in political demands for accountability and control. At the heart of a new administrative style, internal control systems have begun to play an important public role and individual and organizational performance has been increasingly formalized and made auditable. The author argues that the new demands and expectations of audits live uneasily with their operational capabilities. Not only is the manner in which they produce assurance and accountability open to question but also, by imposing their own values, audits often have unintended and dysfunctional consequences for the audited organization.Less

The Audit Society : Rituals of Verification

Michael Power

Published in print: 1999-08-19

Since the early 1980s there has been an explosion of auditing activity in the United Kingdom and North America. In addition to financial audits there are now medical audits, technology audits, value for money audits, environmental audits, quality audits, teaching audits, and many others. Why has this happened? What does it mean when a society invests so heavily in an industry of checking and when more and more individuals find themselves subject to formal scrutiny? This book argues that the rise of auditing has its roots in political demands for accountability and control. At the heart of a new administrative style, internal control systems have begun to play an important public role and individual and organizational performance has been increasingly formalized and made auditable. The author argues that the new demands and expectations of audits live uneasily with their operational capabilities. Not only is the manner in which they produce assurance and accountability open to question but also, by imposing their own values, audits often have unintended and dysfunctional consequences for the audited organization.

Ranald C. Michie

Business and Management, Business History, Finance, Accounting, and Banking

This is the first study of the entire British banking system from its origins in the late seventeenth century until the present. It analyses what made the British banking system the most resilient ...
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This is the first study of the entire British banking system from its origins in the late seventeenth century until the present. It analyses what made the British banking system the most resilient and trusted in the world and how it was able to maintain that for so long. It describes a process of continuous adaptation and innovation as the system responded to the challenges and opportunities that arose over three centuries, provides an explanation for the calamity that overtook the British banking system in 2007/8, and the insight required to restore it to the position it once occupied. To achieve that insight requires an understanding of the entire banking system, not a subset of banks. Banks are key components of a complex financial system continually interacting with each other, and constantly changing over time. This makes the conventional distinctions drawn between different types of banks inappropriate for any long-term analysis. These distinctions were neither absolute nor permanent but relative and temporary. Banks were also central to both the payments system and the money market without which no modern economy could function. Only with such an understanding is it possible to appreciate what the British banking system achieved and then maintained from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, why it was lost in such a short space of time, and what needs to be done to return it to the position it once occupied. Without such an understanding the mistakes of the recent past are destined to be repeated.Less

British Banking : Continuity and Change from 1694 to the Present

Ranald C. Michie

Published in print: 2016-11-10

This is the first study of the entire British banking system from its origins in the late seventeenth century until the present. It analyses what made the British banking system the most resilient and trusted in the world and how it was able to maintain that for so long. It describes a process of continuous adaptation and innovation as the system responded to the challenges and opportunities that arose over three centuries, provides an explanation for the calamity that overtook the British banking system in 2007/8, and the insight required to restore it to the position it once occupied. To achieve that insight requires an understanding of the entire banking system, not a subset of banks. Banks are key components of a complex financial system continually interacting with each other, and constantly changing over time. This makes the conventional distinctions drawn between different types of banks inappropriate for any long-term analysis. These distinctions were neither absolute nor permanent but relative and temporary. Banks were also central to both the payments system and the money market without which no modern economy could function. Only with such an understanding is it possible to appreciate what the British banking system achieved and then maintained from the middle of the nineteenth century onwards, why it was lost in such a short space of time, and what needs to be done to return it to the position it once occupied. Without such an understanding the mistakes of the recent past are destined to be repeated.

A new era of global banking and insurance is emerging, with leading banks eager to serve international markets. This book explores the issues that arise for banks in their strategic choices as they ...
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A new era of global banking and insurance is emerging, with leading banks eager to serve international markets. This book explores the issues that arise for banks in their strategic choices as they move into these new international markets. This book challenges conventional assumptions from the international management literature on topics such as the limits of globalization, the importance of cultural and institutional distance, the nature of economies of scale and scope, the existence of first mover advantages, the logic behind the global value chain configuration, the speed and timing of market entry, as well as organizational architecture. It focuses on fundamental strategic decisions such as when, where, and how to enter foreign markets and how to design the organizational architecture of the multinational financial services firm. Using simple theoretical frameworks illustrated by case examples, this book provides a guide to the challenges of the international market for financial services firms.Less

Building an International Financial Services Firm : How Successful Firms Design and Execute Cross-Border Strategies

Markus Venzin

Published in print: 2009-01-22

A new era of global banking and insurance is emerging, with leading banks eager to serve international markets. This book explores the issues that arise for banks in their strategic choices as they move into these new international markets. This book challenges conventional assumptions from the international management literature on topics such as the limits of globalization, the importance of cultural and institutional distance, the nature of economies of scale and scope, the existence of first mover advantages, the logic behind the global value chain configuration, the speed and timing of market entry, as well as organizational architecture. It focuses on fundamental strategic decisions such as when, where, and how to enter foreign markets and how to design the organizational architecture of the multinational financial services firm. Using simple theoretical frameworks illustrated by case examples, this book provides a guide to the challenges of the international market for financial services firms.

Investment is no longer a matter of individual savers directly choosing which shares or bonds to buy. Rather, most of their money flows through a ‘chain’: an often extended sequence of ...
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Investment is no longer a matter of individual savers directly choosing which shares or bonds to buy. Rather, most of their money flows through a ‘chain’: an often extended sequence of intermediaries. What goes on in that chain is of huge importance: the world’s investment managers, who are now almost as well paid as top bankers, control assets equivalent in value to around a year of total global economic output. In Chains of Finance, five social scientists (four of whom have worked in investment management) discuss the ways in which the intermediaries in the chain influence each other, channel the flows of savers’ money, enhance investment decisions, and form audiences for each other’s performances of financially competent selves. The central argument of the book is that investment management is fashioned profoundly by the opportunities and constraints this chain creates. Whether chains constrain or enable, however, they always entangle, tying intermediaries to each other—silently and profoundly shaping the investment management industry. Chains of Finance is a novel analysis that will make students, social scientists, financial professionals and regulators look at the workings of financial markets in a new light. A must-read for anyone looking for insights into the decision-making processes of investment managers and those influenced by and working for them.Less

Chains of Finance : How Investment Management is Shaped

Published in print: 2017-08-17

Investment is no longer a matter of individual savers directly choosing which shares or bonds to buy. Rather, most of their money flows through a ‘chain’: an often extended sequence of intermediaries. What goes on in that chain is of huge importance: the world’s investment managers, who are now almost as well paid as top bankers, control assets equivalent in value to around a year of total global economic output. In Chains of Finance, five social scientists (four of whom have worked in investment management) discuss the ways in which the intermediaries in the chain influence each other, channel the flows of savers’ money, enhance investment decisions, and form audiences for each other’s performances of financially competent selves. The central argument of the book is that investment management is fashioned profoundly by the opportunities and constraints this chain creates. Whether chains constrain or enable, however, they always entangle, tying intermediaries to each other—silently and profoundly shaping the investment management industry. Chains of Finance is a novel analysis that will make students, social scientists, financial professionals and regulators look at the workings of financial markets in a new light. A must-read for anyone looking for insights into the decision-making processes of investment managers and those influenced by and working for them.

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